Race for Survival: From Somewhere to Nowhere?
"My feet are cut and scabbed..I am so tired. My whole body is aching...We walked from 3am to 10am and rested during the day.” Baliram Kumar had walked for over 25 days from Bangalore to the State of Uttar Pradesh. His story is not unique. Shocking images of lines and lines of migrants trudging along in the harsh Indian summer heat have brought attention to the plight of internal migrants.
India’s Coronavirus lockdown left migrants with no source of income, and cut off from their village support systems. So, thousands of migrant laborers were forced to set off on foot, travelling over 1000s of kilometers to try and return to their hometowns. With factories and businesses closed, and no savings or social security benefits to provide a safety net, India’s migrant workers chose the “very practical strategy to walk home” from the cities.
Immigration has definitely been a hot topic on the news with particular emphasis being placed on international immigartion. We have all seen the pictures of the refugee crisis in Europe, and of the caravans at the U.S Mexcian border to name a few. Less addressed is the topic of internal migration - human migration within a country itself.
However, internal migration is an equally important issue that needs to be addressed. In fact, according to the World Bank, the magnitude of internal migration is about two‐and‐a‐half times greater than that of international migration. Although internal migration is essential to the economic growth of many developing nations, internal migrants often survive on a subsistence basis in the informal economic sector - basically businesses not regulated by the government.
India is a prime example of a nation heavily impacted by internal migration. Rural versus urban development gaps have forced large segments of India’s rural populations to move to urban, and more industrialised regions for employment. Migrant labor has built India’s cities from roads to bridges to malls, and houses. In fact, India has an estimated 140 million internal migrants working in some its most populous cities, most of whom depend on daily wages. They comprise 20% of India's workforce, contributing to nearly 50% of India’s GDP. So, migrant workers are absolutely essential to India’s economy, but are they treated accordingly?
Due to the lack of regulation in their job sector, even with a job, millions of migrant workers are not guaranteed decent working conditions. Many of these workers earn comparatively lower incomes, and are left unable to adequately meet the educational, health, and housing needs of their household. They often lack access to stable employment, housing, social security and healthcare in the cities even though they are absolutely essential to the nation’s development. Their problems often remain ignored and unaddressed.
Even fewer consider the impact mass internal migration has on those left behind in the villages. Often those left behind - including the elderly and those simply too poor to move - often struggle to survive with meager resources and few people left to turn to. The families left behind in poverty stricken villages have poor access to food and few savings to depend on. The elderly especially suffer “because no one is there to take care of them” in their villages.
Take for example, Dharua and her husband Maheshwar who stayed behind in their village even “as their kin migrated” leaving their homes “deserted” for most of the year. Dharua lamented that “More than half the people have migrated. But I don’t know brick kiln work and I feel weak. I have never left this village and I can’t leave now.” She is not alone in her experience.
In fact others go on to further assert that “The older people who die here in these villages, (it’s) often because no one is there to take care of them.” The elderly die simply because no one chooses to stay behind or even has the ability to stay behind. They are defenseless and completely unprepared to face the challenges of old age. There is no proper support system in place to provide a safety net for the elderly left behind in the deserted villages - no source of steady income, supplies or care.
Not only do the issues faced by internal migrants remain unaddressed, but also the vacuum created by this massive magnitude of migration is ignored. We neither consider the plight of people such as Dharua who are left behind or the plight of daily wage workers like Kumar who struggle to make an adequate living. These problems have always existed, however, the COVID- 19 pandemic has simply revealed the deep rooted problems of India’s current internal migration system that does not provide adequate support to its workers or the families left behind. Now is the time to change the status quo, to not only remember and honor the contribution of the migrant worker, but also to actually fix the situation in the villages that are crumbling apart due to the increased migration to the cities.
https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/indias-migrant-labor-pains
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/they-treat-us-like-stray-dogs-migrant-workers-flee-india-cities
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/07/covid-19-hidden-majority-indias-migration-crisis
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/socialpolicy/2020/06/18/migrant-workers-in-india-the-pandemic-pressure/
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/view-india-should-use-migrant-labour-crisis-to-transform-economy-society/articleshow/76184723.cms?from=mdr
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-migration-india-drought/as-drought-fuels-indian-migration-those-left-behind-suffer-the-most-idUSKBN1H503E
